


A World Beyond the Sun

by howevernot



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bisexual Captain Flint | James McGraw, Crying, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Literary References & Allusions, Love, M/M, Minor Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, Multi, Past Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw, Past Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Post-Canon, Trauma, Unbeta'd, james loves thomas so much, very minor discussion of opiates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24579472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot
Summary: Eventually, he cried himself out and just laid in Thomas’s arms, too tired to weep but not yet asleep. Thomas still had not asked him anything. He just kissed the top of James’s head. His beard was itchy and strange against James’s scalp, almost uncomfortable but James reveled in it, in the strange comfort of it. He relished in the feeling of Thomas’s chest moving under his cheek, the thump of his heart, how real and solid and alive his love was, when everything else in his life had shattered.In which reuniting with Thomas does not make James less sad and traumatized. But he gets there in the end.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 13
Kudos: 78





	A World Beyond the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally about my need to see Flint have a good cry. But then it turned into a fic about how being with your love doesn't fix depression and then I was like how many literary references can I cram into one fic. Needless to say I've put my English degrees to good work here.
> 
> The title comes from Ciardi's 2003 translation of _The Divine Comedy._
> 
> If you're confused about any of the literary references please refer to the end notes! If you need clarification on anything I am happy to answer questions! Also, I apologize for any mistakes.

His face hurt; his throat burned. Yet he was still crying, shuddering with convulsive sobs against Thomas’s chest. Every time he though he’d regained his composure, taken a few deep breaths and stemmed the flow of tears, he felt it welling up in him again, a feeling he couldn’t quite identify, and he had to tuck his head back into Thomas’s shoulder as he struggled to breathe through the tears. Thomas hadn’t asked him about it yet, had not pushed him to speak. After their fervent joyful embrace in the field that afternoon, James had been handed a hoe and been told to get to work. They’d not spoken much. There was so much to say that James found himself speechless and Thomas it seemed found the same. He simply tucked James’s head underneath his chin, letting James’s tears soak his shirt right through. 

The next time he calmed enough appreciate Thomas’s hand running steadily up and down his back. The sensation caused another wave of tears. It had been so long since someone had touched him with any measure of gentleness. Miranda had of course but at the end each touch had been fraught, whispered through her touch had been discontent and loneliness. He cherished the last touches he shared with her, the touch to her back in Ashe’s house, the gently held hand, one evening they leaned together in his cabin, foreheads touching. But he looked back on those few days with pain. He should have cherished those moments as they happened.

Certainly, there had been other times when it was gentle and simple between them. Once, James had found a secluded beach and brought Miranda to it. They’d spent the whole afternoon naked and wet. He held her in the waves, teaching her how to swim. Later when she was heavy and tired from sun and exertion he had eaten her out in the shade of a tree, licking the taste of brine from her folds. That evening she had ridden him in the dark, whispered filthy things to him as he’d moaned, and once they were both sated, she had held him. He’d rested his head against her chest and not thought about the Walrus, his crew, their grief, Nassau Town, any of it. He’d just appreciated the feel of her damp warm skin against his.

It had been years since that night. All that time, Thomas had been alive, so close to them both. There was guilt in his tears, for not looking harder, for accepting Peter’s words when he’d informed them of Thomas’s death. There was a raw pain too, the loss of Miranda fresh and new, here tucked into Thomas’s arms, and other losses. His home, destroyed as it was, in Nassau. His relationship with Madi. Silver. A whole life to mourn, his own.

He was overwhelmed with the intensity of it. Those harrowing days on Skeleton Island weighed heavy on him too. But for now, he tried to get close to Thomas, as close as the small bed and their aching bodies would allow.

Eventually, he cried himself out and just laid in Thomas’s arms, too tired to weep but not yet asleep. Thomas still had not asked him anything. He just kissed the top of James’s head. His beard was itchy and strange against James’s scalp, almost uncomfortable but James reveled in it, in the strange comfort of it. He relished in the feeling of Thomas’s chest moving under his cheek, the thump of his heart, how real and solid and alive his love was, when everything else in his life had been shattered.

~~~~~~

After his arrival, he was too bewildered to get too deep inside his head. He went where he was told; they gave him a shovel and told him where to dig. He dug. He and Thomas didn’t often get to speak. He was so exhausted he often could not bring himself to speak in the evenings and their days were busy and full. The men sang sometimes as they work, and this at least was familiar. They didn’t sing shanties but the principle was the same. He finds that even when he could not speak, he could still sing.

The work was backbreaking. But the Navy had long prepared him for toil. Even before he’d joined the navy as a boy, he’d worked with his grandfather building and repairing ships. He was the only man here built for labor. All the other inmates were disgraced lords and earls, the children of aristocrats or wealthy merchants. They didn’t know how to work through exhaustion, to keep working when it seems hopeless. Certainly, they’d all learned by now, but not without a meeting with a cane, or whip, or butt of rifle. James had already had obedience beaten into him in the Navy as a boy. He reached for that piece of himself now

The other inmates were surprised by his seemingly easy adjustment, the guards suspicious perhaps, Ogelthorpe delighted, complimenting him on his work ethic.

Thomas asked him about it one night.

“I’ve never known you to be so – acquiescent,” Thomas had finished delicately, pushing away his bowl and spoon. They were sitting in their tiny shack, having elected to eat alone, away from the other men.

“When I was a boy, I saw a boy flogged about the fleet. We were the last ship in port and when they strung him up, he’d was already almost dead. When they cut him down, they dumped him back on land until someone came to carry his body away.”

Thomas’s face twisted with something like outrage.

“Sometimes, acquiescence is advantageous.” James wasn’t sure that was the truth. He wasn’t sure his inaction wasn’t just exhausted defeat.

“For who?” Thomas asked and James hated him for being so fucking insightful, for cutting through his arguments so easily and cleanly. 

“What would you have me do, Thomas?” James returned. His shoulders were tense and sore and he took a deep breath, trying to relax them. His shirt was damp with the day’s sweat against his back, now uncomfortable in the increasing cool of evening. 

Thomas’s eyes gleamed in a way James remembered from salons and luxury and spirited debate. The gleam of his idealism was still enough to convince James into madness again.

So, they began to plan, or rather, he whispered ideas to Thomas, who worked them into fully formed plans. Thomas told him which inmates to would support a resistance, which would keep quiet and help them escape quietly. James leveraged Thomas’s good standing in the little community to start ripples of resistance. Most days he was too tired to reach for his rage but when he talked to other inmates, he could find it. He found himself putting on the mask of Flint when he was holding court with Thomas. 

Their little court was a parody of Thomas’s salons and nothing like pirate court but James was a good orator, and Flint honed that skill into a weapon sharper than any blade. It felt a little like being on Maroon Island, trying to convince men to take up arms with him. He felt a little like Odysseus at a war counsel. There was some distant excitement in the planned violence. He felt awake when organizing these men. The energy changed him. He could feel the way his stance changed as he spoke, the way he felt comfortable and confident and false with the mask of Flint in this place.

~~~~~~

It’s after one of these meetings that they talked about him. He’d already told Thomas about Flint, briefly sketched the outlines of his life away from Thomas in the intervening weeks since his arrival. But they had not talked about who James had been in the last ten years, only what he was called.

Thomas pulled him back to their little shack after sharing a meal with the men, using the shared activity to conceal the true purpose of their meeting. 

Thomas pushed James down onto the bed. He lit a candle and then knelt in front of James, took his hand, kissed his knuckles and studied James in the dark.

“Was that Flint? When you were speaking with Remington?” Thomas asked after a long silence.  
James huffed out a breath, feeling wrung out. 

“No, Flint would have hit him, or threatened him.”

Thomas gave him a look.

“A worse threat than the one you gave,” he clarified.

Remington was one of the few men allowed to help Ogelthorpe’s household; he could give them valuable information about Ogelthorpe’s plans and the rotations of the guards. James hadn’t wanted him in on it. Remington was too happy to be working in the house, too close to their jailer for James’s liking. But Thomas had insisted. When Remington had asked why he should not just report them, James had been reminded of Silver for a flash and his impulse had been to do what he’d done with Silver, shove Remington against a wall with a knife to his throat. James didn’t have knives now, but Thomas must have seen something in the way James had changed at Remington’s words. In the end, Thomas had lightly reminded Remington both of his mistreatment at Ogelthorpe’s hands when he’d first arrived and the secret everyone but Ogelthorpe knew, that Remington was stealing from the house and kitchens. This was sufficient to quiet Remington, at least temporarily, though James still didn’t trust him.

James was grateful to have Thomas at his side. No matter how much he distrusted Remington, he was grateful that Thomas’s presence could prevent James’s violence, render it unnecessary. Thomas reminded him that he could lean on someone completely. When he and Thomas stood shoulder to shoulder, he could be James, but he didn’t have to be. It makes his heart ache.

“You are beautiful, like that,” Thomas told him, wrenching James from his thoughts. James winced at the words. It’s not like he didn’t know he could be alluring as Captain Flint. For many years, he’d carefully cultivated the way he looked and moved in public to be intimidating but attractive. He did not command men because he was kind to them, because he was close to them, because they were loyal to him. He commanded them because he was effective and frightening and alluring as the sea itself. He’d built a mystique and he didn’t want Thomas to see it.

He couldn’t find the words to explain this to Thomas so he just shook his head and reached out to touch Thomas’s cheek, to feel the prickly bristle of beard hair against his fingers. It was a shockingly lovely sensation. Real and alive against James’s skin. 

“Miranda told me that once.” It had been on the way to Charles Town. She’d been watching him at his shift at the helm. She’d been watching him for days, as he met with De Groot and Billy, as he commanded his ship under her watchful eye. At the time the compliment had caused a flash of pleasure in his chest. 

“She pierced my ear, you know,” he told Thomas, trying to deflect a conversation about Miranda and Charles Town.

Thomas hummed and reached up to touch the bead that was still in his ear. 

“Is this one of hers?” he asked, running his thumb along the shell of his ear.

“No,” his voice was rough, “I don’t know. I never asked her where she got it.”

The night she pierced it was a favored memory of his. He’d thanked her with kisses, and eventually he’d thanked her on his knees, right beside their table in broad daylight. She had moaned shamelessly, surely loud enough for the neighbors to hear. She had offered to return the favor but he had been having trouble finishing recently and turned down the invitation. 

He decided to tell Thomas that story once they were both in bed. He’s expecting grief. He was not expecting Thomas to tug him to the edge of the bed and kneel between his open thighs.

“I’m honoring her wishes,” Thomas answered when James had breathlessly asked what he was doing.

~~~~~~

It wasn’t until after they’d escaped and resettled it really hit him, the full force of the life he’d lost, the future, the people. Now he was away from the war, away from the plantation, away from the account, his only goal was living, and he found it difficult.

They resettled in Pennsylvania. James took menial labor, helping at the cooperage, sometimes helping carpenters raising houses. Thomas found his way to a bookseller then into a position tutoring the children of a local merchant family. 

James found himself exhausted all the time. James thought at first it was just the work that was wearing on him, he was not so young anymore and he did hard exhausting labor for little pay. Then he thought he’d taken ill, and Thomas fretted terribly, having seen terrible illnesses sweep through Bedlam and the plantation. But he didn’t run a fever, he didn’t cough or vomit, he was just tired. He slept.

He slept long hours, spent days unable to get out of bed, feeling listless and blank. He felt guilt, distantly. They managed to steal money from Ogelthorpe, and James had taken a small portion of gems from the chest on Skeleton Island, so they were not exactly in bad shape, but he should have been doing something, anything more than this, laying about useless and thoughtless.

Thomas called a doctor, who saw nothing wrong but suggested a tincture and bleeding as a cure. Thomas refused the bleeding with a shudder but took the tincture. James hated it. He knew what opium felt like in his body; he was tempted by the bliss of oblivion it promised. It was much the way he imagined the end of his war would be, oblivion in drink or death or at the bottom of the sea. 

He took the bottle out to the street that night and poured it out into the gutter. Then, pulled along but some unknowable force, he began to walk.

He knew distantly that Thomas would worry, if he woke to find James gone. But the walking felt good. It was more than he’d done in weeks. The darkness felt good too. Few people were out; no one’s gaze lingered long on him. He did not need to account for himself in the dark. 

The thought sent something wrenching in his chest and his eyes began to burn. He wandered out of town, head aching with unshed tears until he found the stream he and Thomas had visited sometimes when James felt up to walking. He collapsed on a boulder and let the tears fall. He tried not to consider the irony of sitting here, in the dark, weeping against cold stone. At least this time he didn’t have a gun aimed at his chest. Fear seared through him at that thought, a fear he’d never allowed himself to feel before. A gun at his chest. Silver pointed a gun at him, willing to kill him before he’d ever reached Thomas. And James would have welcomed it at the time. 

It was not just Silver though, who made his heart feel so heavy. It was Dooley, who died for no reason, it was De Groot, it was Joji, it was even Billy, who he’d known since he was a boy. It was Madi and Gates and Eleanor and Miranda and their spare little home. God, what did Flint know about loving anyone.

~~~~~~

When he returned Thomas was awake, sitting in the dark at their only table.

“James,” he breathed, when james walked in. James had nothing to offer him by way of response or reassurance. He slid down into the chair across from Thomas, the only other chair they had.

“You frightened me. I thought you’d begun walking in your sleep. Are you alright?” he asked, his tone tightly controlled in that way it got when he suppressing some large emotion badly.

James could not honestly say he was alright, though he wanted to reassure Thomas. He heaved a breath and began a story.

“When Odysseus returned home, he could not settle. His son was a stranger, the comfort of his wife had grown stale, so he set off again unable to entirely forget the sea, for more great adventures.”

Thomas interrupted him. “Am I the wife here?” he asked, though the humor in his voice was strained. 

“Listen. They set out, and found a universe beyond the sun,” Thomas looked like he wanted to interrupt here again. James supposed he was annoyed at being told a story he already knew so well but James threw him a look. Thomas settled back, though James had no doubt he would get an earful in the morning about Dante’s terrible ideas on sin and punishment.

“And there they saw a dark mountain. The men were filled with excitement and joy. It was the greatest prize they could imagine, though they did not know what waited for them. But then a storm hit, spun the ship ‘round three times before the sea swallowed them whole.”

James let the story hang in the silence between them for a long moment.

“I know the story as well as any other James,” though that wasn’t true, few paid as careful attention to their reading as Thomas, “But what I fail to see why you’ve told it to me. Are you saying you want to return to the sea? That my comfort has grown stale?”

James began another story. 

“I once told someone I knew that I hoped to carry my ore so far inland that no one would recognize it anymore and then I would not bury it but use it to till the land for the rest of my days.” Thomas made a face; he still hated farming. “But now I fear I’m still lost, on that ship, turning in the sea with the mountain just out of reach,” he admitted.

Thomas reached for his hand, “James.”

James felt like he was burning with the admission. 

“They were heading towards Purgatory though, James. Not gold.”

James thought that was an apt description of his life. He was not sure that when he got out of this unfeeling tired slump that he wouldn’t just end up in a purgatory of his own guilt. Instead he answered, “Haven’t you read the other books? He reaches heaven eventually.”

“Am I god in this metaphor?” Thomas asked, “I feel it’s a disservice to my character to compare me to god.”

Thomas’s humor drew a short laugh from James. 

“I am sorry to so insult you, my Lord,” he answered with momentary humor, and they smiled at each other in the gloom.

James felt the expression slide off his face.

“I am telling you I’m drowning. I never planned to live. After Miranda died, I had nowhere to return to. I wasn’t Odysseus. I was just a man waiting for the day I could sink to the bottom of the sea.”

Thomas made a soft noise and reached out to cradle one of James’s hands in both of his, rubbing a thumb along James’s palm.

“I don’t know how to stop being that man, even now that I’ve reached home,” he finally gritted out.

He could not bear to look at Thomas, to see whatever pain was etched upon his face.

“Do you remember how the Odyssey actually ends?” Thomas asked rubbing a soothing line against James’s hand.

“Penelope takes Odysseus to bed; Athena makes the night long and he shares his story with her in the dark. They hold each other,” James answered, remembering their own first night, where James could do nothing but weep.

“He starts another war, the next day, with the families of the suitors.”

James looked up at him, it was difficult to make out Thomas’s expression in the dark.

“And then Zeus strikes the earth with a lightning bolt, and Athena has to arbitrate peace on Ithaca.”

James frowns at him. 

“It’s true! And I hate to imagine what it implies about humanity, perhaps that only a higher power can stop violence and war, otherwise all of human existence is a cycle of unending petty violence. Or that there is no freedom from fate.”

“Thomas,” James warned, uninterested in debating the merits of and ending he didn’t even remember. Besides, James’s energy was flagging. He still felt raw from his weeping earlier.

“Odysseus couldn’t settle in the Odyssey either. The story isn’t about the aftermath James. It’s not a guide on how to live once you’ve come home. Your life isn’t going to reach a last page and stop turning once you settle down. You have to keep writing.”

“I’m tired, Thomas.”

Thomas took his hand and kissed the palm and James remembered vividly how once Miranda and Thomas recreated Romeo and Juliet’s first scene together, replacing Romeo’s kiss to the back of Juliet’s hand with a kiss to the palm. Miranda had played Romeo and Thomas Juliet and the three of them had dissolved into helpless happy laugher when they were done.

No one had ever kissed James’s palm, not even back in London, with all of them laughing and well loved.  
James needed to be closer. He pulled Thomas up onto his feet to embrace him, gripping his shoulder hard.

“I will be here, until you are no longer so tired. Until you can see that you are no longer in a spinning boat on a hopeless sea.”

James released a shuddering breath against Thomas’s shoulder.

Thomas lead him to bed. This time he held Thomas who took a long time to settle. Once his breathing had settled and James was starting drift Thomas spoke into the dark.

“Through a length of years we drank the cup of sorrow mixed with tears; thou, for thy lord; while me the immortal powers detained reluctant from my native shores. Now, bless’d again by Heaven, to throng my empty folds with gifts or spoils.”

James recognized the words as those of the Odyssey though he didn’t recognize the translation. He still felt empty, but perhaps he just needed time to find the gifts and spoils to fill the empty place within himself. His throat ached at the words and tightened his grip on Thomas. They slept twined around each other.

~~~~~~

Theirs had always been a literary courtship. Once, when James had returned from sea, Thomas had looked at him with such hunger it made James’s knees weak. He’d kisses James with desperation in the sitting room, right where any servant or guest could see, and when they broke apart, he’d recited lines from a play he’d seen recently.

“I brought home conquest, he would gaze upon me,  
And view me round, to find in what one limb  
The virtue lay to do those things he heard:  
Then would he wish to see my Sword, and feel  
The quickness of the edge, and in his hand  
Weigh it; he oft would make me smile at this.”

James had been moaning low in his ear at the end of the recitation. 

Miranda had been the same. She’d once called him to the library to share a passage from Antony and Cleopatra that made him blush fiercely. She’d laughed at him but that evening he had bent over the bed and she had taken him from behind, just as the passage described.

Neither he nor Thomas were so forward anymore. James was often still too tired for such play. So, Thomas read to him in the evenings. He did not spare texts that were painful, that made James squirm with discomfort at the reading. He read the Odyssey, a new transition by Alexander Pope, often pointing out what a fool Odysseus was. Though he did lavish attention upon the scene where Penelope and Odysseus’s reunited and fucked the night away. He read The Leviathan, which at times could bore James to tears. Sometimes, James dozed as he read. Sometimes, when the reading became too painful or too absurd for James, James would leave the house to walk in the dark. James still worked only sporadically. 

But the grinding despair slowly began to ease. 

The first night of reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, James had huffed into Thomas’s shoulder in the middle of sonnet nineteen. Thomas paused waiting for James to explain. 

“It's familiar,” he admitted after a long silence. “An older man falling for a younger man, for whom he cannot speak his affection. The fair youth even falls in love with the dark woman instead of the poet and in the end the poet is betrayed.”

When Thomas cocked his head at James, he realizes his mistake. 

“Silver?" he asked and James nodded. "You’ve not told me much about Silver.”

The implied question didn’t fill him with panic as he’d expected, or exhaustion, just a slow trepidation.

James leaned over into Thomas, kissing his cheek. He’d kept the beard, even in Pennsylvania, and James loved it. He loved this man, who was not Lord Hamilton, and who was not the anonymous man he met that first day in the plantation. And for a shining moment he understood, this must be how Thomas loved him, how Miranda loved him. He was not James McGraw; he was not Flint. With Thomas he simply was. The two of them saw him, through the posturing and performance. He loved them both all the more for it.

He kissed Thomas’s shoulder with a small smile. 

“Tomorrow. I want to hear you read tonight.”

**Author's Note:**

> The story of Odysseus leaving home and getting swallowed by the sea appears in _The Divine Comedy._ The mountain that Odysseus sees is implied to be an entrance to Purgatory, much like the mountain that led Dante to Purgatory. If you read the entire _The Divine Comedy,_ Dante does indeed meet God at the end, which is wild.
> 
> The _Romeo and Juliet_ reference is from the "holy palmers kiss" moment in act 1 scene 5. You should absolutely go read it.
> 
> The quote from _The Odyssey_ is from end of book 23 of Alexander Pope's 1725 translation. You can find it on project Gutenberg, if you're curious! Also yes, I know this was published a few years after this fic takes place. Shhhhh.
> 
> The "quickness of the edge" quote is from _A Maid's Tragedy_ by Beaumont and Fletcher. To be clear the lines are spoken by a man about a man in the play. It is indeed exactly as gay as it sounds, though the play is ultimately an revenge story about a woman fucking murdering her abuser. The gay stuff is sadly mostly in the background. This is also available on Project Gutenberg! I have no idea if anyone would have been staging this play in the 17th century, but I doubt it, so lets just pretend this play is way more popular that it actually is.
> 
> The _Antony and Cleopatra_ references dialogue from act 2 scene 5. Here Cleopatra describes fishing and imagining her catch as Antony. Then she says:  
> "Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst  
> I wore his sword Philippan."  
> Yeah, it's about pegging.
> 
> If you want to come yell at me [I'm on tumblr.](https://howevernot.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Comments and kudos give me life!


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